Beyond Reason
by Rhianwen
Summary: Their dreams are dust now, but their lives aren't. The world will start to turn again. It always does. PostROD TV. JokerWendy. Unforgivably bad.


Beyond Reason

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Summary: Their dreams are dust now, but their lives aren't. Post-ROD TV. Joker/Wendy. Unforgivably bad.

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Disclaimer: Still don't own 'em, they still don't like me, story still isn't making me any money, that still makes me bitter. :o)

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He had always prided himself on being a calm, rational man, able to reason himself out of an unbalanced mental state when he needed to, and able to hide it behind a calm demeanour when he couldn't. He'd trained himself to it from childhood, and it had in turn carried him to a place to achieve.

It was simple, really; one had only to examine their situation in a cool-headed manner and from there reasonably choose the option of reaction that would prove the most beneficial.

After all, nothing had ever been gained from becoming hysterical.

Yes, all in all, Mr. Joseph Carpenter was an exceptionally rational man.

But there were times when these rules no longer applied, and when telling oneself what was most rational simply did not work.

Like when one woke up in a rocking chair on the front porch of an admittedly very nice home in the country, staring at a dog in a rosebush, when one had been moments ago attempting to stop a group of several young women from interfering with his carefully-constructed plans to turn the world into a peaceful haven in which the potential of humanity might be realized and everyone might be equal in every way.

Even so, under the circumstances, he would think when looking back on this day, that he had reacted with remarkable calmness, climbing from the rocking chair and making his way down the walk leading away from the house in effort to glean some sense of the situation.

To try to discover exactly where he was? This was a reasonable course of action to take, even if he had done so with a degree of haste that spoke of slight panic.

When he'd heard a light footfall behind him and roughly siezed the approaching little blonde, demanding where they were and what had happened, that had been a fairly obvious and logical pair of questions to ask. To be sure, her bewildered, wide-eyed silence might have implied something not strictly either logical or rational in his tone, but the substance of the question itself was very much so.

She had recovered quickly, or at least managed to tuck her fears away for later, and at the back of his mind, he felt a swell of gratified pride at the coolheadedness he had instilled in a young woman who had been a _child_ day before last. She told him, with a hint of unsteadiness in her voice, that the doctor had said he would be confused like this upon waking up.

That was half an hour ago.

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Since then, she's shown him to the living room of the little house that has been their home for the past months, or so she's informed him has, in the detached tone of the reports she has become adept at churning out, and no hint of seeing the irony of having to show him around his _home_.

Months.

Months?

"Has it been months?"

She nods briefly.

He believes her instantly; the sick and silent panic that this time has clearly meant for her, wondering if she would spend the rest of her life devoted to someone who couldn't hear and couldn't understand and didn't care any more than he's ever been able to let her see, has left its mark.

Less time could not have made her eyes so tired that their bright blue looked a dull grey.

Less time could not have been responsible for the sense that he gets of something half-crazy with loneliness and terror lurking behind her quiet composure.

He has no pity for the girl twisting the pretty little ruffle of her prim white blouse into merciless knots, eyes too tired and drained from the terror of months alone to fly into raptures at the end of her solitude, because she'll be fine now. He'll see to that.

But he has just woken up to find that the world has ground to a screeching halt. It's new to him, the pain still fresh, this failure and ruin of what years have been spent to achieve. He ignores the thought that his failure was hers, too, and the thought that he spent years systematically eliminating everything else from her life.

He looks up at her, where she is standing in front of the coffee table set before the couch.

"What went wrong?"

"Sumerigawa had her manuscript with her."

"I remember that much. Someone neglected to search her carefully enough."

He expects to see her flinch at that, despite the fact that this was not her responsibility. But she doesn't, and although he doesn't want to hurt her – exactly – the absence of guilt annoys him.

"The little girl was nearly killed." _Now_ there's guilt.

"Was she?"

"Yes."

He looks at her sharply, searching her face for anything accusatory or judging, and finds none.

The blankness in her expression is nearly a challenge, and he, not entirely unconsciously, accepts it.

"Sit down, please," he requests sharply.

She moves immediately to do as he asks, but still her expression doesn't change.

"Are the authorities looking for us?"

"I think so," she replies with a short nod.

"And what of the others? Did they escape, as well?"

"The trials are still going on."

"And how did we avoid being taken into custody?"

She hesitates.

"It wasn't difficult. We got out before the authorities found the facility."

"And you simply left everyone else?"

This time, she does flinch, but only for an instant. Her chin lifts slightly, and he's nearly proud of her for that.

"It was what they said to do: get you to safety. I wouldn't disobey orders from them either."

"Understood. And what do you suggest we do now?"

"I don't know. We can't leave yet. But we'll figure something out."

"You have a lot of faith."

"We _will_," she insists softly. "You always do."

He pulls suddenly and roughly away from the light touch on his shoulder.

"It was perfect. How could we fail?"

She hesitates. She doesn't have an answer for this. She doesn't know how they could have _succeeded_, let alone how they could have failed.

"I don't know," she murmurs, eyes trained on her hands folded in her lap, and he is tempted for half a second to either hit her or grab her and crush her to him and stay that way until the warmth of contact and the faintly sweet scent of her hair lessen the acute sting of failure of something that was for the good of the world, that _should have worked_.

"There was no reason for failure."

Again, she says nothing. This time, she doesn't reach for him. He turns intent eyes on her.

"You never believed it would happen, did you?"

"Of course I did." Her reply is too quick, too automatic.

"There's no reason to lie about that anymore."

"I did believe it would happen. I don't know if I always believed that it _should_."

"Then why did you stay?"

She's again lost for an answer. It sounds idiotic to say that she stayed because she wanted to make him happy, and she doesn't even know if it is true. At times, their goals seemed honourable._ The right thing to do._ At other times, they seemed mad.

Sometimes, they seemed both.

Most of the time, they seemed both.

"I don't know."

"Why are you still here?"

"Because I didn't want to go. I still don't. I won't go until you tell me to."

"Would you actually go if I asked you to?"

"No."

He smiles wanly.

"Trust you for that."

And this time, he reaches for her, pulls her into his arms, almost into his lap, and holds her tightly against him. She makes a startled noise, then relaxes and buries her face against his shoulder. His hand moves back into her hair, stirs the longish strands of pale gold to brush soft against his cheek, and for the first time in this hour that he has rejoined the world, it becomes remotely conceivable that she might be right.

Their plans are dust now, but their lives aren't.

And the world begins, slowly and tentatively, to turn again.

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End Notes: Sweet merciful gumbo, this little bitty is waaaaaaaaay worse than I remember it.

Oh, well. Edits to provide a more _palatable_ big chunk of sugar.


End file.
